Sharmarkee dismissed the party’s prohibition on his candidacy due to behind-the-scenes control of votes.

Evidence

There were seventy-seven members present, and the final vote was forty-four in favor of Osman and thirty for Sharmarkee, while three abstained. As a consequence, the party’s central committee warned Sharmarkee that he could not run for president as an SYL candidate. Sharmarkee dismissed the ruling as he knew the vote was much closer than it appeared, since the thirteen MPs who had been expelled from the party and who did not vote in the party caucus were in his pocket. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 924